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Updated: May 12, 2025
In more peaceful times her peculiar talent would doubtless have led her towards literature. In her best style she has rare vigor and simplicity. She has moments of eloquent thought. There are flashes of it in her early letters to Sophie, which she begs her friend not to burn, though she does not hope to rival Mme. de Sevigne, whom she takes for her model.
The exquisite letters of Madame de Sévigné show us society assuming its modern complexion, women becoming the arbiters of taste and fashion, and drawing-rooms the centre of life. These tendencies were reflected in literature; and Corneille's tragedies of power were replaced by Racine's tragedies of the heart.
The tapestry-covered Louis-Quatorze chairs had belonged to Madame de Sevigne, and had furnished that dull country house whence she wrote the liveliest letters extant to her disreputable cousin, Bussy, Count of Babutin. These inestimable treasures had been picked up by Mr. and Mrs.
"We are assured," Madame de Sevigné writes, "that the gates of Namur, Antwerp, and other towns have been closed against the Countess, the people crying out, 'We want no poisoner here'!" Even at Brussels, whenever she ventured into the streets she was assailed by a storm of insults; and on one occasion, when she entered a church, "a number of people rushed out, collected all the black cats they could find, tied their tails together, and brought them howling and spitting into the porch, crying out that they were devils who were following the Comtesse."
But the question is, whether the animals who endure such sufferings of various kinds, for the service and entertainment of man, would accept of existence upon the terms on which they have it. Madame Sévigné , who, though she had many enjoyments, felt with delicate sensibility the prevalence of misery, complains of the task of existence having been imposed upon her without her consent .
Her brown merino gown edged with green embroidery was worn low-necked; but a tulle fichu, carefully drawn down by hidden strings, covered her neck and shoulders, though it opened a little in front, where its folds were caught together with a sevigne. Beneath this delicate fabric Bathilde's beauties seemed all the more enticing and coquettish.
They met on the following Saturday at the Great Western terminus, John Saltram still in high spirits, and Gilbert Fenton quietly happy. That morning's post had brought him his first letter from Marian an innocent girlish epistle, which was as delicious to Gilbert as if it had been the chef-d'oeuvre of a Sevigné. What could she say to him? Very little.
Let English women be sure that the best way to understand the heroines of the Continent is not by mimicking them, however noble they may be, not by trying to become a sham Rahel, or a sham De Sevigne, but a real Elizabeth Fry, Felicia Hemans, or Hannah More.
It is a fact of more interest to us that he was an uncle of the Marquis de Sevigne, and the best result of the marriage to the young girl, who was not at all pleased and whose fortunes it clouded a little, was to bring her into close relations with the woman to whom we owe the most intimate details of her life. The rare natural gifts of Mlle. De La Vergne were not left without due cultivation.
I see pass before me the fair and elegant dames of that galaxy of wit and beauty, Mesdames de Longueville, Lafayette, and de Sévigné, fluttering their fans as they listened and replied to the gallant compliments of Voiture, Ménage, Chapelain, Desmarets, or De Réaux, or to the spirituelle causerie of Chamfort.
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